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beattyml1
July 5th, 2009, 04:14 AM
I have been trying to find the best applications that will enhance user experience and be easily usable by a totally inexperience computer user. The sort of applications that you would install on an ubuntu computer for your grandma or the clueless computer user down the street.

So a few rules:

Nothing that ever requires a terminal to use (may require terminal to install)
Must either be in the ubuntu repos, have its own repository, or be a .deb
Must be immediately usable and useful
Nothing that comes preinstalled or is extremely well known (eg. rhythmbox, banshee, etc)


So a few I've found:

Well not really a program but the Google Repo ( http://www.google.com/linuxrepositories/ubuntu704.html )
Picasa, Google Gadgets, Google Desktop, Google Earth (in the google repositories)
Pulse Audio Mixer (allows you to mix the volume of individual applications, in the official repos)
Moovida (the newer much better version of elisa, http://www.moovida.com/ (repo) )

monsterstack
July 5th, 2009, 04:24 AM
Miro is good. Thunderbird, too. Try mtPaint if you want a drawing application less bloated than the GIMP but not as completely useless as mspaint.

papangul
July 5th, 2009, 06:38 AM
Tux Paint.

Edit: One of the most useful application for noobs, I think, is Opera. Though it is well known, I am still forced to mention it because of it's usefullness. The default tab management is noob freindly, in-built torrent, mail, chat clients; and now Opera Unite all are very handy tools for noobs.

madjr
July 5th, 2009, 11:52 AM
http://ubuntu-tweak.com/

giver (non-trivial network file sharing)

LinuxFox
July 5th, 2009, 01:59 PM
Stellarium - if someone's into astronomy and constellations of stars, I could recommend this one. I remember installing it from Add/Remove when I started using Ubuntu, and it's easy to use. Just drag the mouse to move the sky.

That's one I could think of that's easy to install and use.

Chilli Bob
July 5th, 2009, 03:50 PM
I'd recommend fotoxx. It's a powerful photo editor, but easier for noobs than learning GIMP. And another vote for mtPaint. Much less learning curve than GIMP for people used to mspaint. (I'm not knocking GIMP. I love it and use it all the time, but you gotta read the manual.)

http://kornelix.squarespace.com/fotoxx/


But please no Opera for noobs. An awful, difficult to use and bug-ridden program. Stick with Firefox. Everybody uses it now, even noobs should be familiar with it.

Marlonsm
July 5th, 2009, 04:03 PM
flPhoto

It's on Add/Remove.

For those who would miss Picture manager on Windows, it can crop, rotate, adjust brightness and contrast, and it's very easy to use.

Sealbhach
July 5th, 2009, 06:37 PM
simple-ccsm

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=simple_ccsm&num=1

Simplified interface for setting up and managing basic Compiz effects. I particularly like the way you can randomize effects for maxing and mining windows.

.

markharding557
July 5th, 2009, 11:37 PM
exaile music player

Pogeymanz
July 6th, 2009, 12:58 AM
But please no Opera for noobs. An awful, difficult to use and bug-ridden program.

Uh, what? What exactly about Opera is hard to use? And hell, I'm using a snapshot of Opera 10 and the only "bug" I have encountered is that it takes a long time to start up compared to the stable Opera 9.64.

Though, I have to say it isn't any more newb-friendly than Firefox...

doorknob60
July 6th, 2009, 01:01 AM
WinFF easy conversion program that uses FFmpeg. Not sure if it's in the repos or not but they have their own repo: http://code.google.com/p/winff/

tcoffeep
July 6th, 2009, 01:05 AM
I think my favourite part of learning linux as a "noob" was figuring out the terminal. I mean, my first two months, I relied on GUI programs and avoided terminals like the plague. Now I prefer the terminal to a GUI program.f

edit :

That said, I think the best "noob" apps are terminal applications.

beattyml1
July 6th, 2009, 01:23 AM
I like the terminal and also think that new linux users who intend to use it sereiously should learn the terminal but please let us have a thread of non-terminal apps, neither my parents nor my customers will ever have any interest in the terminal (not to say that I wouldn't like it if they did :) ).

Cheers

And by the way I checked out few of the apps posted that I hadn't heard of and some of them are just down right awesome. :guitar:

Xzallion
July 6th, 2009, 02:26 AM
I think you should just have them install the best/most popular app that is in the repo's, so that they can learn and have a better chance of finding someone on the forums for help in case they need it. That's just my two cents.

Twitch6000
July 6th, 2009, 02:31 AM
I found when I was noob and used Ubuntu after PClinuxOS Ubuntu-Tweak was a very helpful tool.

Another helpful tool is Gnome-Do even though its is pretty well known.

Bart_D
July 6th, 2009, 02:44 AM
GIMP..........it's the free version of Photoshop with small differences. You gotta learn it at some point.


...Ubuntu-Tweak was a very helpful tool....

Bah, I found it absolutely useless! It is senseless to put a tool that offers a "package cleaner" in the hands of a new user who plans to use the system for serious work.

Change screensaver? Third Party applications? Message when moving panel?:lolflag::lolflag: Anyone with half a brain can figure out how to do that without something like this chewing up RAM....particularly on a slower system(you know....the kind that Ubuntu is DESIGNED FOR)!

jonian_g
July 6th, 2009, 02:52 AM
I really like
-DeVeDe, really easy to create a dvd from an .avi file.
-Sound Converter, easy and it can extract audio even from flash video files.
-Miro, easy and very good for entertainment
-Gnome Scan (flegita), I just wonder why xsane is preinstalled in ubuntu
-Listen music player, very easy and has a lot of features (lyrics, wikipedia info, last fm, artist events etc. and all these in the main applicaton window, not poping windows like in other music players)